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Friday, April 29, 2016

For our math this week, we explored the concepts of greater than and less than. We used our paper alligator who likes to "chomp" on the bigger numbers!

During our workshop, the children used dominoes to compare numbers, made block towers and compared them, and more. We had so much fun with it, we forgot to get some pictures! We also read the fun math story More or Less about a boy who compares numbers at a school fair game.

We have also been reading fairy tales this week. We read two versions of Jack and the Beanstalk, Jack and the Beanstalk...

And Kate and the Beanstalk, written by the same author as the Magic Tree House series.

After reading, we brainstormed about how the author of Kate and the Beanstalk changed the main character to a girl perhaps because she wanted to see herself in the story. The children read with their partners and made connections between the characters in their stories and themselves.

Thursday, April 28, 2016

We finished our animal atlases this week, along with our print study of landforms and land features.

Each child chose their favorite landform or feature--mountains, volcano, river, etc.--and painted their creation onto plexiglass. After painting, they pressed the glass onto paper to create a beautiful print of their landform. We have lots of lovely waterfalls and exploding volcanoes!

Sunday, April 24, 2016

We tallied the number of times we reduced, reused and recycled this past Thursday and Friday.

Wow! It looks like we recycle a lot and are really working on reducing what we use. Many of the children noted that they reuse things in our classroom art workshop, and that they reuse things like paper all the time!

We spent a little time outside at the Breck labyrinth with the rest of our kindergarten community, spreading grass seed and reciting an Earth Day poem. We promised to keep our Earth "forever green!"

Thursday, April 21, 2016

We have been getting ready for Earth Day tomorrow. We learned the song "I Love the Mountains" and even watched a short version of the song from the Discovery Channel similar to this one.

(We did talk about how in one scene, there are some scientists playing
a prank on each other, which is pretend and in real life would be very dangerous!)

The students have also started to learn the song "All Earth's' Critters Have a Place in the Choir" in preparation for our service trip to the Walker Home in May.

We also talked about the differences between reducing, reusing and recycling. The students started a tally today with how many times they reduced what they used, how many times they recycled and how many times they reused things during the school day. We'll record how much we can do tomorrow and share our results!

We also read the classic The Giving Tree. The students had an honest discussion about whether or not the boy chopping down the tree and using its branches and apples was a good choice for the Earth or a negative one. On one hand, some argued that it was not because trees help clean the air and give us oxygen. On the other hand, some argued that it was a good choice for the earth because he didn't waste anything the tree gave him.

Tuesday, April 19, 2016

During our math workshop this week, we reviewed attributes. Examining attributes means looking at traits of objects--their size, shape, color, number of sides, etc. While some children worked on reviewing their math facts, some played "guess my rule" and sorted shapes by a variety of attributes.

Thursday, April 14, 2016

We began to delve a little deeper into what we know about continents this week. Many of the children wondered not just why the continents look the way they do, but how they were formed. We started with a short video from Bill Nye, the Science Guy.

For a tectonic plate experiment, we used graham crackers as our plates and frosting and whipped cream as the liquid mantle.

The children pushed the crackers to form mountains, then moved them away from each other to create volcanic islands.

Everyone began exploring the app Barefoot Atlas to create their own non-fiction resources.

And began writing an earth day poem with a cutout booklet.

Some students used the spring sunlight this week to began drawing!

And some of us couldn't wait to get on the monkey bars in the warm weather!

Friday, April 8, 2016

We are back into the swing of things as we finish out our kindergarten year! It is going by so quickly.

Our students worked in math stations this week on adding coins, delving into word problems and exploring a coding app Daisy the Dinosaur.

The app is a lot of fun and teaches children how to program a dinosaur (a lot like our class dinosaur) to do different moves. The app store link is here if families are interested.

We also spent time on in our "Daily Five" literacy stations.

Building crossword words

Reading phrase by phraseIdentifying word families

Reading with expression in partners

Sorting words by medial vowel sounds

Writing "secret" consonant-vowel-consonant words

We are working on some special "Readers Theater" pieces, in which the children will read and act as the characters from different short stories. The goals of Readers Theater include reading with expression, increasing fluency, and collaborating with a set of peers. Look for some pictures later next week!

Writers Workshop: Persuasive Writing

We began our last formal writing unit of the year, persuasive writing. We start by thinking about problems we see around the school, playground, classroom--anywhere in our Breck community. The children are encouraged to use posters to name the problem and come up with reasons why it is a problem. As the weeks go on, we will talk about using positive language (as in "please walk" rather than "don't run") and how to use rich language to be even more persuasive. Many children are writing about seeing trash on the floor in the hallway, about noise in the hall--even bus safety! We will publish and post our posters around the school on April 22 for Earth Day.

Spring Service Project

It is time for Birthday Wishes! Families who use our local food shelf often are unable

to buy extra items that make a birthday special, such as:

Cake Mix & Frosting

Candles

Paper Plates

Cups

We have learned that people from cultures around the world celebrate in

other ways so we are also collecting:

Rice

Noodles

Cookie mix

Pizza crust mix

If you would like to donate, please bring items to school April 14-May 2. Thank you for your GENEROSITY!